The Immanent Frame

Crosswise Christ

Philosophies, suggests Patrick Lee Miller, come in two basic sorts, immanent or transcendent, according to whether they ascribe the highest reality to the natural world or to another world beyond the natural; locate the highest good in human flourishing or in something beyond humanity; and teach that we die with our mortal bodies or instead live beyond death as immortals. Arguing that any philosophy that is either exclusively immanent or transcendent promotes not love but resentment, this series of posts presents the philosophy of Heraclitus, seeking to show that it is paradoxically both. Is it possible? Is it rational? Yes, Miller argues, but only once reason and reality are properly understood as crosswise.

Patrick Lee Miller is an assistant professor of philosophy at Duquesne University and the author of Becoming God: Pure Reason in Early Greek Philosophy (Continuum). His work focuses primarily on ancient Greek philosophy, albeit in constant conversation with modern thinkers. Becoming God examines the early conflict between Heraclitean philosophy and the Parmenidean metaphysics that was to become the cornerstone of Plato’s thought, and hence of the tradition of Western philosophy that followed in his wake.

The first of the four posts in this series argued that if we seek a philosophy that encourages us to love this world, we must look for one that is both transcendent and immanent. Noting that such a philosophy would be contradictory, and thus forbidden by the way of reasoning for which the principle of non-contradiction is the firmest of all, the second post sought to humble this principle. The goal was not to reject it, for without it nonsense quickly follows; the goal was instead to demote it, by showing how inadequate it was to the task of contemplating this world of becoming. The third post next articulated a superior principle, the principle of chiasmus, which includes the principle of non-contradiction, and its characteristic activity, analysis, but harmonizes it with synthesis in a crosswise logic that reveals the concealed and eternal structure of our temporal world. This structure, the Heraclitean logos, turns out to be the encouraging philosophy we set out to find.

My previous post sought to humble the principle of non-contradiction, and thus the logic of consistency it defines, finding it inadequate for thinking the temporal world in which we live and breathe and have our being. Parmenides first articulated this principle, calling “equally deaf and blind” those who would not think consistently according to it, those “hordes without judgment, for whom both to be and not to be are judged the same and not the same, and the path of all is crosswise (palintropos).” Without compromise, he recognized the conflict between his principle and our world of change and diversity. Consistently, he rejected time and the logic needed to understand it. His target here was Heraclitus, who claimed that “a thing agrees in disagreement with itself; it is a crosswise harmony (palintroposharmoniē), like that of the bow and the lyre.” This post aims to explain his earlier, contradictory, but nonetheless more accurate logic.

My previous post argued that anyone who wishes both to think well and to feel well about the world should seek a way of thinking as immanent as it is transcendent, a crosswise way of thinking that is more capacious than the logic of consistency defined by the principle of non-contradiction. Fortunately there has long been such a way, the way of Heraclitus: “A thing agrees in disagreement with itself; it is a crosswise (palintropos) attunement (harmoniē), like that of the bow and the lyre.” In Becoming GodI have argued that Heraclitean logic is not only more ancient, but also more accurate than the logic of consistency that Parmenides and the Platonic tradition deployed against it. This tradition has been dominant from the moment of its founding, thanks in part to the rhetorical genius of its founder, making non-contradiction the supreme principle of reason in the eyes of nearly every philosopher since. This post aims first to humble it before the next seeks to revive its Heraclitean rival.

Anyone who has entered the labyrinth of A Secular Age should welcome this volume as a guide. Its contributors unwind many threads—some leading deeper inside, others promising a way out—but this series of posts can follow only one. Taking up Taylor’s distinction between traditions of transcendence and those of immanence, while remaining sensitive to its subtleties, William Connolly divides these traditions still further, observing that they are constituted not only by the beliefs they affirm about the world but also by the emotions they cultivate toward the world thus affirmed. Not content to delineate merely abstract possibilities, though, he adds that “each tradition is equipped to honor Jesus by offering a distinctive interpretation of his calling and mode of inspiration.” Accepting his invitation, this post (and those to follow) will attempt to offer such an interpretation—from the perspective of the Heraclitean tradition.